"
"Not go back; when I'm captain! why, you and father both said
that if I got to be that, I should not stop till I was
seventeen--and now I'm only fifteen and a half. O, mother, you
don't mean it! Father couldn't break his word! I may go back!"
Mrs. Boyd shook her head sadly, and then explained as briefly and
calmly as she could the heavy blow which had fallen upon the
father, and, indeed, upon the whole family. Mr. Boyd had long
been troubled with his eyes, about as serious a trouble as could
have befallen a man in his profession--an accountant--as they
call it in Scotland. Lately he had made some serious blunders in
his arithmetic, and his eyesight was so weak that his wife
persuaded him to consult a first-rate Edinburgh oculist, whose
opinion, given only yesterday, after many days of anxious
suspense, was that in a few months he would become incurably
blind.
"Blind, poor father blind!" Donald put his hand before his own
eyes. He was too big a boy to cry, or at any rate, to be seen
crying, but it was with a choking voice that he spoke next: "I'll
be his eyes; I'm old enough."
"Yes; in many ways you are, my son," said Mrs. Boyd, who had had
a day and a night to face her sorrow, and knew she must do so
calmly. "But you are not old enough to manage the business; your
father will require to take a partner immediately, which will
reduce our income one-half. Therefore we cannot possibly afford
to send you to school again. The little ones must go, they are
not nearly educated yet, but you are.
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